What is Machine Learning?

Last Updated : 26 May, 2024

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“What is machine learning?” It’s a question that opens the door to a new era of
technology—one where computers can learn and improve on their own, much
like humans. Imagine a world where computers don’t just follow strict rules but
can learn from data and experiences. This is the essence of machine learning.
From suggesting new shows on streaming services based on your viewing
history to enabling self-driving cars to navigate safely, machine learning is
behind these advancements. It’s not just about technology; it’s about
reshaping how computers interact with us and understand the world around
them. As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, machine learning remains at
its core, revolutionizing our relationship with technology and paving the way
for a more connected future.
Table of Content
 What is Machine Learning?
 Difference between Machine Learning and Traditional Programming
 How machine learning algorithms work
 Machine Learning lifecycle:
 Types of Machine Learning
 Need for machine learning:
 Various Applications of Machine Learning
 Limitations of Machine Learning
What is Machine Learning?
Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence that enables algorithms to
uncover hidden patterns within datasets, allowing them to make predictions on
new, similar data without explicit programming for each task. Traditional
machine learning combines data with statistical tools to predict outputs,
yielding actionable insights. This technology finds applications in diverse fields
such as image and speech recognition, natural language processing,
recommendation systems, fraud detection, portfolio optimization, and
automating tasks.
For instance, recommender systems use historical data to personalize
suggestions. Netflix, for example, employs collaborative and content-based
filtering to recommend movies and TV shows based on user viewing history,
ratings, and genre preferences. Reinforcement learning further enhances these
systems by enabling agents to make decisions based on environmental
feedback, continually refining recommendations.
Machine learning’s impact extends to autonomous vehicles, drones, and
robots, enhancing their adaptability in dynamic environments. This approach
marks a breakthrough where machines learn from data examples to generate
accurate outcomes, closely intertwined with data mining and data science.

Limitations of Machine Learning:

 Data Availability: Machine learning needs sufficient data to learn;
without it, learning is ineffective.
 Lack of Diversity: Non-diverse data makes it hard for the model to
capture useful insights.
 Minimum Observations: At least 20 observations per group are
recommended for accurate learning.
 Poor Performance: Insufficient or non-diverse data leads to poor
evaluation and prediction results.
1/2
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You said:
benefits
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Benefits of Machine Learning:
  Automation: Enables automation of repetitive tasks, saving time and
reducing human error.
 Improved Decision-Making: Provides data-driven insights that support
better decision-making.
 Pattern Recognition: Detects complex patterns and trends in data that
are hard to identify manually.
 Scalability: Easily adapts to process large volumes of data, handling
complex tasks efficiently.
 Continuous Improvement: Models can learn and improve over time as
more data becomes available.
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Supervised Learning: The model is trained on labeled data, learning to map
inputs to outputs. Common for tasks like classification and regression (e.g.,
spam detection).
Unsupervised Learning: The model works with unlabeled data to find hidden
patterns or groupings (e.g., customer segmentation). It’s commonly used in
clustering and association.
Semi-Supervised Learning: Combines a small amount of labeled data with a
large amount of unlabeled data to improve learning efficiency. Useful when
labeling data is costly.
Reinforcement Learning: The model learns by interacting with an
environment, receiving rewards or penalties. Often used in robotics, gaming,
and self-driving cars.
Self-Supervised Learning: A subset of unsupervised learning where the data
provides its own labels (e.g., predicting missing words in a sentence).
 Machine Learning

Difference between Machine Learning and Traditional Programming

The Difference between Machine Learning and Traditional Programming is as
follows:

Traditional
Machine Learning Programming Artificial Intelligence

Machine Learning is a
Artificial Intelligence
subset of artificial In traditional
involves making the
intelligence(AI) that programming, rule-
machine as much
focus on learning from based code is written
capable, So that it can
data to develop an by the developers
perform the tasks that
algorithm that can be depending on the
typically require human
used to make a problem statements.
intelligence.
prediction.

Machine Learning uses Traditional AI can involve many

a data-driven approach, programming is different techniques,
It is typically trained on typically rule-based including Machine
historical data and then and deterministic. It Learning and Deep
used to make hasn’t self-learning Learning, as well as
predictions on new features like Machine traditional rule-based
data. Learning and AI. programming.
 Traditional
Machine Learning Programming Artificial Intelligence

Sometimes AI uses a
Traditional
combination of both
ML can find patterns programming is
Data and Pre-defined
and insights in large totally dependent on
rules, which gives it a
datasets that might be the intelligence of
great edge in solving
difficult for humans to developers. So, it has
complex tasks with good
discover. very limited
accuracy which seem
capability.
impossible to humans.

Traditional
Machine Learning is the AI is a broad field that
programming is often
subset of AI. And Now it includes many different
used to build
is used in various AI- applications, including
applications and
based tasks like Chatbot natural language
software systems
Question answering, processing, computer
that have specific
self-driven car., etc. vision, and robotics.
functionality.

How machine learning algorithms work

Machine Learning works in the following manner.
A machine learning algorithm works by learning patterns and relationships
from data to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly
programmed for each task. Here’s a simplified overview of how a typical
machine learning algorithm works:
1. Data Collection:
First, relevant data is collected or curated. This data could include examples,
features, or attributes that are important for the task at hand, such as images,
text, numerical data, etc.
2. Data Preprocessing:
Before feeding the data into the algorithm, it often needs to be preprocessed.
This step may involve cleaning the data (handling missing values, outliers),
transforming the data (normalization, scaling), and splitting it into training and
test sets.
3. Choosing a Model:
Depending on the task (e.g., classification, regression, clustering), a suitable
machine learning model is chosen. Examples include decision trees, neural
networks, support vector machines, and more advanced models like deep
learning architectures.
4. Training the Model:
The selected model is trained using the training data. During training, the
algorithm learns patterns and relationships in the data. This involves adjusting
model parameters iteratively to minimize the difference between predicted
outputs and actual outputs (labels or targets) in the training data.
5. Evaluating the Model:
Once trained, the model is evaluated using the test data to assess its
performance. Metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, or mean squared error
are used to evaluate how well the model generalizes to new, unseen data.
6. Fine-tuning:
Models may be fine-tuned by adjusting hyperparameters (parameters that are
not directly learned during training, like learning rate or number of hidden
layers in a neural network) to improve performance.
7. Prediction or Inference:
Finally, the trained model is used to make predictions or decisions on new data.
This process involves applying the learned patterns to new inputs to generate
outputs, such as class labels in classification tasks or numerical values in
regression tasks.
Machine Learning lifecycle:
The lifecycle of a machine learning project involves a series of steps that
include:
1. Study the Problems:
The first step is to study the problem. This step involves understanding the
business problem and defining the objectives of the model.
2. Data Collection:
When the problem is well-defined, we can collect the relevant data required
for the model. The data could come from various sources such as databases,
APIs, or web scraping.
3. Data Preparation:
When our problem-related data is collected. then it is a good idea to check the
data properly and make it in the desired format so that it can be used by the
model to find the hidden patterns. This can be done in the following steps:
 Data cleaning
 Data Transformation
 Explanatory Data Analysis and Feature Engineering
 Split the dataset for training and testing.
4. Model Selection:
The next step is to select the appropriate machine learning algorithm that is
suitable for our problem. This step requires knowledge of the strengths and
weaknesses of different algorithms. Sometimes we use multiple models and
compare their results and select the best model as per our requirements.
5. Model building and Training:
 After selecting the algorithm, we have to build the model.
 In the case of traditional machine learning building mode is easy it is just
a few hyperparameter tunings.
 In the case of deep learning, we have to define layer-wise architecture
along with input and output size, number of nodes in each layer, loss
function, gradient descent optimizer, etc.
 After that model is trained using the preprocessed dataset.
6. Model Evaluation:
Once the model is trained, it can be evaluated on the test dataset to determine
its accuracy and performance using different techniques. like classification
report, F1 score, precision, recall, ROC Curve, Mean Square error, absolute
error, etc.
7. Model Tuning:
Based on the evaluation results, the model may need to be tuned or optimized
to improve its performance. This involves tweaking the hyperparameters of the
model.
8. Deployment:
Once the model is trained and tuned, it can be deployed in a production
environment to make predictions on new data. This step requires integrating
the model into an existing software system or creating a new system for the
model.
9. Monitoring and Maintenance:
Finally, it is essential to monitor the model’s performance in the production
environment and perform maintenance tasks as required. This involves
monitoring for data drift, retraining the model as needed, and updating the
model as new data becomes available.
Types of Machine Learning
 environmentalSupervised Machine Learning
 Unsupervised Machine Learning
 Reinforcement Machine Learning
1. Supervised Machine Learning:
Supervised learning is a type of machine learning in which the algorithm is
trained on the labeled dataset. It learns to map input features to targets based
on labeled training data. In supervised learning, the algorithm is provided with
input features and corresponding output labels, and it learns to generalize from
this data to make predictions on new, unseen data.
There are two main types of supervised learning:
 Regression: Regression is a type of supervised learning where the
algorithm learns to predict continuous values based on input features.
The output labels in regression are continuous values, such as stock
prices, and housing prices. The different regression algorithms in
machine learning are: Linear Regression, Polynomial Regression, Ridge
Regression, Decision Tree Regression, Random Forest Regression,
Support Vector Regression, etc
  Classification: Classification is a type of supervised learning where the
algorithm learns to assign input data to a specific category or class based
on input features. The output labels in classification are discrete values.
Classification algorithms can be binary, where the output is one of two
possible classes, or multiclass, where the output can be one of several
classes. The different Classification algorithms in machine learning are:
Logistic Regression, Naive Bayes, Decision Tree, Support Vector Machine
(SVM), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), etc
2. Unsupervised Machine Learning:
Unsupervised learning is a type of machine learning where the algorithm learns
to recognize patterns in data without being explicitly trained using labeled
examples. The goal of unsupervised learning is to discover the underlying
structure or distribution in the data.
There are two main types of unsupervised learning:
 Clustering: Clustering algorithms group similar data points together
based on their characteristics. The goal is to identify groups, or clusters,
of data points that are similar to each other, while being distinct from
other groups. Some popular clustering algorithms include K-means,
Hierarchical clustering, and DBSCAN.
 Dimensionality reduction: Dimensionality reduction algorithms reduce
the number of input variables in a dataset while preserving as much of
the original information as possible. This is useful for reducing the
complexity of a dataset and making it easier to visualize and analyze.
Some popular dimensionality reduction algorithms include Principal
Component Analysis (PCA), t-SNE, and Autoencoders.
3. Reinforcement Machine Learning
Reinforcement learning is a type of machine learning where an agent learns to
interact with an environment by performing actions and receiving rewards or
penalties based on its actions. The goal of reinforcement learning is to learn a
policy, which is a mapping from states to actions, that maximizes the expected
cumulative reward over time.
There are two main types of reinforcement learning:
 Model-based reinforcement learning: In model-based reinforcement
learning, the agent learns a model of the environment, including the
 transition probabilities between states and the rewards associated with
each state-action pair. The agent then uses this model to plan its actions
in order to maximize its expected reward. Some popular model-based
reinforcement learning algorithms include Value Iteration and Policy
Iteration.
 Model-free reinforcement learning: In model-free reinforcement
learning, the agent learns a policy directly from experience without
explicitly building a model of the environment. The agent interacts with
the environment and updates its policy based on the rewards it receives.
Some popular model-free reinforcement learning algorithms include Q-
Learning, SARSA, and Deep Reinforcement Learning.
Need for machine learning:
Machine learning is important because it allows computers to learn from data
and improve their performance on specific tasks without being explicitly
programmed. This ability to learn from data and adapt to new situations makes
machine learning particularly useful for tasks that involve large amounts of
data, complex decision-making, and dynamic environments.
Here are some specific areas where machine learning is being used:
 Predictive modeling: Machine learning can be used to build predictive
models that can help businesses make better decisions. For example,
machine learning can be used to predict which customers are most likely
to buy a particular product, or which patients are most likely to develop
a certain disease.
 Natural language processing: Machine learning is used to build systems
that can understand and interpret human language. This is important for
applications such as voice recognition, chatbots, and language
translation.
 Computer vision: Machine learning is used to build systems that can
recognize and interpret images and videos. This is important for
applications such as self-driving cars, surveillance systems, and medical
imaging.
 Fraud detection: Machine learning can be used to detect fraudulent
behavior in financial transactions, online advertising, and other areas.
  Recommendation systems: Machine learning can be used to build
recommendation systems that suggest products, services, or content to
users based on their past behavior and preferences.
Overall, machine learning has become an essential tool for many businesses
and industries, as it enables them to make better use of data, improve their
decision-making processes, and deliver more personalized experiences to their
customers.
Various Applications of Machine Learning
Now in this Machine learning tutorial, let’s learn the applications of Machine
Learning:
 Automation: Machine learning, which works entirely autonomously in
any field without the need for any human intervention. For example,
robots perform the essential process steps in manufacturing plants.
 Finance Industry: Machine learning is growing in popularity in the
finance industry. Banks are mainly using ML to find patterns inside the
data but also to prevent fraud.
 Government organization: The government makes use of ML to manage
public safety and utilities. Take the example of China with its massive
face recognition. The government uses Artificial intelligence to prevent
jaywalking.
 Healthcare industry: Healthcare was one of the first industries to use
machine learning with image detection.
 Marketing: Broad use of AI is done in marketing thanks to abundant
access to data. Before the age of mass data, researchers develop
advanced mathematical tools like Bayesian analysis to estimate the value
of a customer. With the boom of data, the marketing department relies
on AI to optimize customer relationships and marketing campaigns.
 Retail industry: Machine learning is used in the retail industry to analyze
customer behavior, predict demand, and manage inventory. It also helps
retailers to personalize the shopping experience for each customer by
recommending products based on their past purchases and preferences.
 Transportation: Machine learning is used in the transportation industry
to optimize routes, reduce fuel consumption, and improve the overall
 efficiency of transportation systems. It also plays a role in autonomous
vehicles, where ML algorithms are used to make decisions about
navigation and safety.
Limitations of Machine Learning-
1. The primary challenge of machine learning is the lack of data or the
diversity in the dataset.
2. A machine cannot learn if there is no data available. Besides, a dataset
with a lack of diversity gives the machine a hard time.
3. A machine needs to have heterogeneity to learn meaningful insight.
4. It is rare that an algorithm can extract information when there are no or
few variations.
5. It is recommended to have at least 20 observations per group to help
the machine learn. This constraint leads to poor evaluation and
prediction.
Conclusion
In conclusion, understanding what is machine learning opens the door to a
world where computers not only process data but learn from it to make
decisions and predictions. It represents the intersection of computer science
and statistics, enabling systems to improve their performance over time
without explicit programming. As machine learning continues to evolve, its
applications across industries promise to redefine how we interact with
technology, making it not just a tool but a transformative force in our daily
lives.

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